DESCRIPTION OF THE RELIGIOUS SITE
DESCRIPTION The Church of Santa Anastasia Romana in Siena, until 2011 was the Catholic Church of San Pellegrino alla Sapienza or La Sapienza.
Inside there are six statues of saints from Siena in the niches of the walls, frescoes with Mary’s stories in the vault and a Nativity of the Virgin in the main altar.
The images of Blessed Andrea Gallerani are probably interesting, deriving from the workshop of Simone Martini, the Saints Peter and Paul by Bartolomeo Bulgarini and the venerated Madonna di Monteguaitano, a small fourteenth-century triptych in ivory and wood from the older church of Maria Santissima del Rosario.
The architecture is a single aisle with a rectangular base, with a semicricular apse and a raised presbytery. The roof is gabled, while inside the space is covered with vaults and a barrel vault, dating back to the eighteenth century.
HISTORICAL RELEVANCE The Church stands on an ancient chapel dedicated to Santa Maria della Misericordia (Mary of Mercy), in the place where there was an ancient hospital founded in the mid-thirteenth century by the blessed Andrea Gallerani, and suppressed in 1408. The existing church was completely transformed in today's shape by the intervention of 1767. The façade and the vault of the internal hall date back to the eighteenth-century renovation.
INTER-RELIGIOUS RELEVANCE The Catholic Church of ancient origins has been, from 2011, an Orthodox Church dedicated to the Holy Anastasia. The Catholic territorial institution "Archdiocese of Siena, Colle di Val d'Elsa and Montalcino" wanted to give all Christians a concrete sign of unity, wanted to entrust the church of S. Pellegrino, in Via della Sapienza, to the Archdiocese Orthodox of Italy and Malta, in order to erect a stable Orthodox Parish that could take care of the many Christians present in the City of Siena belonging to this confession.
After directions of the Archdiocese in the Parish, dedicated to the Roman martyr Saint Anastasia, the sacraments in the Slavic and Greek Byzantine rites are celebrated.
RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE The Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches are the oldest and most similar as far as doctrine and organization among all the Christian communities,
After the reciprocal excommunications of 1054 (Schism of the East), Orthodoxy and Catholics remain separate and in total contrast until the middle of the last century. The excommunications were abrogated (formally: "erased from the memory and from the bosom of the Church") with a "common declaration" of Paul VI and the Patriarch of Constantinople Athenagoras on December 7, 1965 (on December 8 the Second Vatican Council closed; on January 5, 1964, Athenagoras and Paul VI met in Jerusalem). Since then many steps have been taken and since 1980 an "international mixed commission for the theological dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches" has been active.
HOW TO USE WITH THE STUDENTS As to use :
If it were possible to visit the Church, after agreement with the Protopresbitero, it could be very interesting to ask the students to examine the sacred images, paintings and statues already present in the Catholic Church of San Pellegrino, and compare them with the iconographic images that were placed for the Orthodox cult.
They will notice some similarities and some differences (for example the fact that the Orthodox religion does not provide sculptural images for theological reasons that have ancient roots).
After having made a photographic report of the various works, subject to consent with the Protopresbitero, the photos could become the leitmotif of a search between differences and similarities of the two Christian cults.
If the on-site visit is not possible, the suggestion of a web search, for images and sites, to find differences and affinities between the two cults could be equally useful.
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